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Remembering Margaret Thatcher's NCAR visit

Just two years after the greenhouse effect became a household phrase, the late Margaret Thatcher—a research chemist before she entered politics—asked to visit NCAR to learn more about it. The British prime minister landed at our Research Aviation Facility on August 3, 1990. After a quick tour, she shuttled to the Mesa Lab, where she was briefed on climate change and other topics by several of our scientist-leaders, including Rick Anthes, Bob Serafin, Warren Washington, and the late John Firor. "I've had a fascinating morning," said Thatcher. It was NCAR's first visit from a foreign head of state—and our only one so far.

There's a color photo and brief writeup in "UCAR at 50." The full story and more photos appeared in a 1990 Staff Notes article, available as a PDFvia the NCAR Library's OpenSky. (More of our history can be found in articles dating back to 1966, as catalogued by OpenSky and the Staff Notes archive.)